Gender and Age in Fieldwork and Fieldwork Education: No Good Thing Is Done by Any Man Alone

Abstract

With examples chosen principally from her own fieldwork, the author shows how age and gender affect the conduct of field research, facilitating the study of some groups and inhibiting (or prohibiting) the study of others. Because much instruction about fieldwork ignores age and gender, it leaves the novice ill prepared to cope with the vicissitudes of actual research. Further, it has led to inaccurate portraits of societies marked by sexual segregation. Male fieldworkers often believe they have described the totality, when in fact their ethnographic vision has been restricted to half or less. In many cases, mature women have the greatest scope as fieldworkers.